


Shades of Colour

by Starrie_Wolf



Series: Fic Exchanges [Starrie Wolf] [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, M/M, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-03-18 16:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3576483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starrie_Wolf/pseuds/Starrie_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steve Rogers woke up, the first thing he registered was that the world was, once again, coloured in shades of grey.</p><p>
  <b>Original Request: Soulmate AU, MCU canon aftermath. Bonus points for working in Peggy and/or the Commando's; or Natasha and/or Sam. May focus primarily on introspection and angsty bits, or dwell on bittersweet moments. No happy ending required. No explicit material.</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ziennajames](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziennajames/gifts).



_He couldn’t hear anything but static from the radio now, couldn’t see anything but pitch darkness, all around him._

_The blue of the ocean engulfed him._

~*~*~*~

There was a ceiling above him, washed white in the bright sunlight streaming through the window.

Steve Rogers closed his eyes, and then opened them again. He was lying underneath an ash grey duvet, in a room painted silver, looking ahead at a black radio sitting on the dapple-grey mantelpiece.

This… was not how he’d imagined the bottom of the ocean to look like.

Exhale. Inhale.

Sound filtered through his awareness, then. The radio was switched on, the announcer’s voice cutting through the white noise buzzing in the back of his skull. A baseball game.

He _remembered_ this game.

Bucky had been there, he remembered. Sitting across from him, laughing at his fumbling attempts with the radio, the connection cutting in and out, the rest of the Howling Commandos somehow managing to cram into their tiny tent.

No, no.

Either he’d gone back in time (w _hat if?_ – whispered his heart – _impossible_ – shot back his brain), or someone was playing a very sick joke on him.

Steve threw the dull covers off, and crossed the room in two bounds. The window wouldn’t budge, even under enhanced strength. Frustrated, he slammed a fist against the wall – and sucked in a shocked breath as his fist went clean _through_. Something white – not brick, he would recognise brick, even in a newly monochrome world – flaked off, coating him in a shower of fine dust.

They thought _this_ could hold him?

The plain door came off its hinges with one violent yank, and alarms began blaring almost immediately. He ignored the guards scurrying towards him like ants – too slow, far too slow – instead making a beeline for the exit he could spot in the far distance.

He burst out into a realm of fantasy, a cacophony of sensations assaulting him from every side. For a moment, Steve stood still, head whipping back and forth, eyes snapping from the large billboard on the side of a glass building, to the multitude of vehicles whizzing past him on the asphalt road.

When he looked around again, there was a man standing opposite him, as silently and suddenly as if he had always been there. He was garbed in a long black coat, a matching eye-patch over one single eye.

“Welcome, Captain Rogers, to the twenty-first century.”

~*~*~*~

_“It’ll pass soon,” Peggy murmured, dabbing at his brow with her blue-embossed handkerchief._

_Steve stared at the vivid redness of her lipstick, the warm chocolate brown of her eyes._

_“I don’t want it to.”_

_His whispered admission hung in the air between them, wringing a small noise of sympathy from Peggy. “Oh, Steve.”_

~*~*~*~

Bucky would’ve wanted him to keep on fighting.

And so, when a new threat loomed over New York, Steve picked up his shield once more.

~*~*~*~

The owner of the shawarma joint was perfectly happy to keep the meat coming and the drinks flowing, in no small part probably due to the card Stark slipped him at the start. People used little rectangular cards to pay for everything now instead of carrying around bundles of cash, Steve had learnt. With the sheer _cost_ of everything nowadays, he wasn’t surprised. Imagine having to tip with _suitcases_ of dollar bills!

Bucky would have found that hilarious. He would have insisted on going everywhere with little suitcases stuffed full of green dollar bills, pretending to be on one of those deals that the Howling Commandos had always had such a blast disrupting. Partially because Jim would spend half the time on the road making up new pithy wisecracks to throw at the enemy at various opportune moments, partially because Jacques was _really_ fond of blowing things up.

And Howard Stark, every time he flew in for a consultation, never did figure out who kept putting salt in the sugar container right before his morning cup of coffee.

(Answer: they all took turns.)

“I wonder how long it’ll take S.H.I.E.L.D. to turn up this time,” Banner mused out loud, finally breaking the silence they’d fallen into, each of them picking listlessly at their own food. Steve blinked slowly, clawing his way out of the post-fight adrenaline crash with some difficulty.

“Probably not for some time, Phil’s got to be chewing out the entire WSC right now. Nuking the whole of Manhattan? Not their finest hour.”

For a moment, all was silent, as all heads turned in Barton’s direction.

“Phil… Coulson?” ventured Steve, finally. Tentatively.

“Yeah?” confirmed Barton guilelessly, chewing on a particularly tough bit of shawarma. A frown began appearing on his face as he surveyed the grim faces looking back at him. “Why… do I have the feeling that I’m missing something?” he began slowly.

Even Stark was silent, for once.

“Nat.” What was probably meant to be a question came out as a plaintive whisper, Barton turning his head to Romanoff. She only pursed her lips, and laid a hand on Barton’s shoulder, which seemed to be all the answer he needed.

The basket of shawarma and chips went crashing to the floor as the archer leapt up, shrugging Romanoff’s hand off. “That can’t be right, I would have _felt_ something.” He stared around wildly at them, the whites of his eyes showing, one hand coming up to clutch at his chest. The other clenched uselessly by his side; clenched and then unclenched.

“You were still under Loki’s control then –” Romanoff began, only to be interrupted with a hiss from Barton, who was now pacing the small confines of the restaurant.

“– and Selvig called it ‘drowning in blue’,” she continued, undeterred by the twin glares Barton was shooting in her direction.

“You _lost_ the ability to see colour while your soulmate was still alive?” Stark’s voice made an abrupt re-appearance, for a moment the intense scientist look on his face oh-so-familiar it made Steve’s head spin.

After a small eternity, Barton nodded his head sharply, once. “Just shades of blue.”

“Loki’s powers had always laid with the manipulation of the psyche,” Thor’s voice, even as it boomed, was infinitely gentle. “The Son of Coul was a man I would have been honoured to call my shield-brother. We grieve with thee.”

Barton’s wild gaze swung erratically, from Romanoff’s charcoal hair, to the chalcedony tablecloth, to Stark’s abandoned alabaster-and-slate armour in the corner. Steve was on his feet before he realised that he had consciously moved, laying a hand on Barton’s shoulder. Being so close to the other man, he could _feel_ the way the archer was minutely quivering under his hand, tense muscles locked up. Was this how he had looked when Peggy had found him in that bar, after Bucky’s death?

“It’ll pass soon,” he murmured, echoing a voice half-remembered from long ago.

~*~*~*~

_The first time Steve saw Bucky was like getting socked in the stomach. There was no pause, no gradual realisation – in one blink the world had still been monochrome, then the next it was awash in a riot of colour. He could remember, vividly, Bucky’s round eyes locked onto his slight form, his sun-kissed hair lit from behind. Like the halo of an angel, he remembered thinking. The Barnes had been moving into the same apartment complex where the Rogers were living, and Bucky had been carrying a box up the stairs when he – almost literally – ran into Steve._

_Seldom did a person find their soulmate so young – still a child, neither of them even in their teens yet – but even without the words to adequately describe what they were experiencing, both of them knew with a bone-deep surety that the other was, somehow,_ important _._

_Of course, that was when his body, still frail from a recent bout of illness, chose to go into a fit._

~*~*~*~

He ended up signing a contract with S.H.I.E.L.D., because what else could he do?

~*~*~*~

_“Who the hell is Bucky?”_

The necessity of breathing reasserted itself, painfully. “You are,” Steve croaked painfully, never looking away from the ash-cloaked man, dressed from top to toe in black armour except one shining silver arm. Metal arm or not, he would have recognised that face _anywhere_. “You’re my soulmate.”

There was a long, long pause. “And yet, I see you and do not see colour.”

And the world exploded around Steve.

~*~*~*~

“Loss of compatibility,” Natasha told Steve, answering his question. “There’s been plenty of research on soulmates in the past seventy years. Leading scientists now think that our ability to see colour is first triggered by encountering the pheromones secreted by a compatible partner within our range.”

Steve swallowed. “And so you think, Bucky’s no longer my soulmate? That’s why neither of us can see colour right now?”

“I think,” Natasha told him very gently, “that the Winter Soldier is no longer James Barnes. And your soul does not consider a Soviet assassin a compatible partner.”

Seated on the couch, Sam said nothing, lost in his own thoughts.

~*~*~*~

It was done. The last Helicarrier was going down.

Steve threw down his shield even as he heard heavy combat boots thud against the metal walkway. The Helicarrier shook underneath them, both men ignoring its dying shudders as they struggled for dominance. But finally, the Winter Soldier lay, defeated.

“Kill me.”

Steve collapsed gracelessly a few inches away, just barely out of reach. “You know I can’t do that, Buck.”

And then he was falling.

Steve had a moment to register the fiery red flames engulfing the Helicarrier before the blue of the water closed over him.

~*~*~*~

Upon opening his eyes, the first thing he said was, “On your left.”

The second was, “So your hair’s red.”

Natasha looked up sharply from where she had been examining her nails, scarlet curls bouncing. “So it is,” she agreed calmly, her tone in complete contrast with her expression. And then – “I suppose you’re going after him, then?” she enquired lightly.

Steve smiled humourlessly. “I let him go once. I won’t do that a second time.”

~*~*~*~

_Till death do us apart, the traditional vows had been. Many a time Steve had reached out, those words on the tip of his tongue, wanting to ask Bucky to bond with him._

_Each time, he’d swallowed the words, felt them burn on their way down. He wouldn’t do that to Bucky, not as a sickly child far too often at death’s door. And later, not as Captain America, not when every single bullet he took, every knife wound he sustained would echo over the bond. He wouldn’t do that to Bucky._

_And then, later, it was too late._

Not this time, swore Steve. This time, he was going to do it right.

~*~*~*~

That resolve lasted all of five seconds, when Steve walked into his apartment flat and realised that someone else, someone not S.H.I.E.L.D., had been in it recently.

 _Don’t come for me_ , proclaimed a note on the table, hastily scrawled in that familiar hand. For a moment he could almost hear Jim in his head, _“Are you a sniper or a doctor, Barnes?”_

Steve shook his head violently, dismissing the ghosts from his past, and regarded it silently. His first thought was to rip it into small pieces, but something stayed his hand. Instead, he folded it up carefully, and stuck it into the pocket of his jeans. “You never did like traditional love letters, Buck,” he said to the air, the shadow of a grin flitting across his face.

~*~*~*~

The sun was setting when he opened the access door to the roof, a beautiful splash of violet against red.

“You just can’t let it go, can you?”

Steve turned around, taking in the dark silhouette leaning against the railing, sniper rifle casually propped up beside him. “No,” he agreed softly. “Not when it’s you, Buck.”

Bucky snorted. “Halfway around the world for the better part of a year, that’s got to be a new record.” His grin turned a little sly, then. “And I suppose the ravaged ruins of Hydra bases left in your wake is just a bonus?”

Steve’s lips tugged upwards, almost of their own accord. “You can’t attribute them all to me,” he pointed out sensibly. “Not when we both know I wasn’t the one to blow half of them up. Jacques would have been pleased with how you’re following in his footsteps.”

“Jacques would have blown _me_ up,” Bucky’s voice turned wistful. “But not before Dum Dum would’ve punched me, and Jim snarked me half to death –”

“– and they’d drag us out for a drink afterwards,” finished Steve. He put down his shield, reaching into the plastic bag he carried in his other hand, snagging one can of the six-pack and tossing it in Bucky’s direction.

Bucky caught it with his metal arm, tugging the tab open without a single shred of hesitation. “To old friends,” he raised the beer.

“To old friends,” Steve echoed, striding forwards, until he could clank his own can against Bucky’s. Without a single word they both turned, then, propping their elbows on the railing as they watched the rest of the compound go up in a crimson conflagration.

“My extraction team will probably be here any moment,” Steve finally broke the silence, regretfully. The blazing inferno around them had died down to just a crackling fire, providing barely enough light to see by in the darkness.

Bucky said nothing, draining the rest of his can in one go.

Steve’s fingers caught his flesh arm before he could talk himself out of it. “Come with me?”

Bucky looked at him for a long while, face blank, until they could both hear the low hum of an approaching engine. Steve looked up, reflexively, even knowing he wouldn’t be able to see anything. The noise dropped to a dull roar, the invisible plane making some sort of flight adjustment, and then the landing ramp dropped open with a clang in front of them. Steve’s fingers tightened, just a fraction, on Bucky’s arm. If Bucky didn’t want to – he wouldn’t take the choice away from Bucky, of course not, but he didn’t think he could just let the other go, either –

Then Bucky smiled, very, very slightly. “Till death do us apart, Steve,” and his fingers tangled with Steve’s own as they scooped up their respective weapons and leapt for the landing ramp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original title was "fifty shades of grey", except the author _couldn't_ find fifty different ways to describe grey. For Steve, anyway. Tony Stark would be a different matter -zirconium, vanadium, titanium, tungsten, pewter, steel, iron...
> 
> If there's something else you want to see (I ended up generating so much headcanon for this fic that never got into the story, like I wasn't sure how interested you would be in the science behind soulmate bonding in this universe, Asgard vs Midgard soulmates, and I wasn't sure if there were pairings you didn't want to see so I didn't dare to put more people in, etc.), leave a comment and I'll be happy to write you another chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Every day, I wake up and I’m reminded that the one thing that made my world beautiful is gone."

Waking up surrounded by sterile white walls felt a little like déjà vu, but for one very important distinguishing factor: Natasha’s hair glowed like a halo of fire on her head, instead of the silvery-grey that he had become accustomed to seeing. Steve raised his head slightly, catching sight of Sam’s chocolate skin in his peripheral vision. He smiled, just a fraction.

“On your left.”

It was totally worth Sam’s reaction.

~*~*~*~

“I need to tell you something.”

Steve had seen less resolute expressions on men marching off to their deaths, and immediately knew what it was about. “Sam,” he said gently, “you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

He felt more than heard Sam snort a quiet huff, and a slight shake of his head. “Let me tell you about Riley.” His eyes went distant, then. “Riley was – we’d met in Army, in bootleg camp.” The shadow of a wistful smile curled up one corner of his lip. “We’d just finished a twelve hour hike, and the only thing you want after that is a hot shower and a flat surface, you know?”

Steve nodded, because he did know. Between Jack’s nonstop bitching about three days in (“Les arbres! Les roches! Pas _une seule_ chose intéressante!” “No, you can’t blow that tree up for target practice – goddamn it, Jack!”) and Jim’s degeneration into worse and worse puns (“What do you call a man who survives mustard gas and pepper spray?” “I’m almost afraid to ask.” “A _seasoned veteran_.” “Why did you have to go and open your big mouth, Barnes!”), it was almost a relief at times to chance upon a HYDRA base.

“So there I was, making a dash for the shower, when someone rounded the corner too fast and we crashed straight into each other. And it’d just rained a couple hours ago, you know, so both of us were sprawled in the mud, staring up at the blue sky.” Sam snorted at the memory, a heart-breaking smile flitting across his features. “A couple of guys came over, tried to ask if we were all right, but we were just gaping at each other like a couple of besotted fools.”

They sat in silence for a while, each lost in their own memories.

Eventually, Sam shook himself. “I got reassigned to his platoon, of course. The Army fucking _adores_ bonded pairs. All that enhanced reflexes, improved concentration, the ability to tell if that mission your partner’s on has gone FUBAR…”

“The –” Steve had to pause to clear his throat. “The serum they used on me, it was supposed to simulate what a soulmate bond could do.”

Sam nodded, but didn’t look surprised. “There’s a lot more science about this now. Stuff about pheromone compatibility and whatnot, how coming into contact with your soulmate’s pheromones lights up all the centres in your brain.” He waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t know much about the science-y stuff; you want details, you ought to ask Tony Stark.”

“Thank you, I will,” Steve told him, making a mental note to send Tony a note.

Sam squinted at him, as if trying to judge if Steve was pulling another one on him, before giving up with a huff. “Whatever floats your boat, man.”

Steve waited a few moments, and then prompted gently, “You were saying?”

“What? Oh, yeah, so, we finished bootleg camp, and Riley wanted to go into Pararescue. He loved saving people, said it made him feel like a superhero.” Sam’s eyes were definitely shining now, but Steve stared at the wall opposite and pretended not to notice. “Me, I just loved flying.” He didn’t need prompting this time when he continued, “It was our second tour, we were gonna be shipping home in a week –” his voice cracked on the last word, but he soldiered on “– it was supposed to be a routine milk run to an abandoned base, do a fly-by, check for survivors, nothing we haven’t done a hundred times before.”

Sam buried his head in his hands. After a moment’s hesitation, Steve gave in and placed a hand on his shoulder. “The intel was bad,” Sam muttered, voice muffled by his palms. “They were waiting for us when we came in.”

His shoulders shook. “Riley – he was a little ahead of me – got clean sniped out of the sky. Half his wings just – _gone_. Fell a hundred metres, straight down, and I – I couldn’t catch him.” He laughed, humourlessly. “Some decorated Pararescue trooper I am. I’ve gotten medals for catching people jumping out of burning buildings, out of crashing planes, but I couldn’t do it the one time it mattered.”

One hand dropped to rub at his sternum. “I felt the bond break the same time I saw him hit the ground.”

Steve didn’t let himself think when he hauled Sam around for a hug.

“I remember standing up, Riley’s blood red on my hands,” Sam told his shoulder in the tone of a confession, “and I had to wipe it off on my fatigues because I couldn’t hold a gun straight. They tell you it’s because your soulmate’s pheromones take time to disperse from your system, stuff about metabolic rates and whatever. But I don’t care about all that science crap. I just remember going in, guns hot, and killing every single one of those bastards. By the time our backup finally arrived –” he paused, chest heaving “– I was standing in the middle of the base in a pool of dark grey.”

A shaky inhale, and then he barrelled on, as if it would make it easier, “I got an early discharge, and started going to the VA because – at first, because it was what Riley would have wanted. And later, I started volunteering there – don’t get me wrong, the work is satisfying, but in my core I’m just a selfish bastard who wants to make him proud of me.”

“He is,” murmured Steve, running a hand soothingly down Sam’s spine, the way his Ma – and later, Bucky – used to do for him when he was shuddering all over from yet another asthmatic attack.

That got a watery laugh. “Like hell you’d know, Rogers.”

Sam shoved at his shoulder, sitting back on the couch. His expression was serious when he looked back at Steve. “Every day, I wake up and I’m reminded that the one thing that made my world beautiful is gone. So, yeah, you and Bucky – I don’t care how many people he’s killed or whether he thinks he deserves it or whatever – normal human beings like us don’t get a second chance. _Go get him_.”

“I will,” promised Steve.

~*~*~*~

“I don’t suppose you’ve changed your mind.”

Steve glanced up at Natasha, absently catching the punching bag with one hand as it swung back towards him, and let his expression tell her what he thought of _that_.

She sniffed. “Yeah, I thought not. Come on, there’s somewhere we need to be.”

There was simply no arguing with Natasha when she got like that.

~*~*~*~

“Stark Tower?”

Natasha raised a finely-plucked eyebrow, jabbing the button for the elevator with a manicured nail. “You want to find an off-grid assassin, you’ll need resources. What, did you think you can walk down the streets calling his name like you’re looking for some sort of lost dog?”

Steve hadn’t thought that far yet, actually, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. Almost subconsciously, his hand slipped into his pocket, feeling the note tucked carefully inside.

“Luckily for you,” she continued as the elevator doors opened out onto the main residence floor at the top of Stark Tower, “ _we_ have access to resources.”

Steve followed her out into the lavishly decorated living room, taking in what appeared to be the entire team – almost, anyway, Thor was still on Asgard – scattered around. At the sound of the elevator, they all turned to look at him in varying degrees of surprise.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tony was the first to recover. “Capsicle!” he cheered, raising the glass in his hand. “What brings you to my –” he opened his arms wide “– humble abode? Come to check out how amazing it is when it’s not occupied by an intrepid alien hell-bent on world dominion?” He gestured with the glass. “It’s a fantastic view –”

“Good, you’re all here.” Natasha talked loudly over Tony, striding into the room like she owned it and dropping onto the couch next to a startled Bruce Banner. “Now, Captain, if you would like to make your case?”

Faced with the array of faces, Natasha’s expectant look was the only thing keeping Steve from fleeing into the elevator. “I, uh –” he stuttered to a halt.

His fingers traced over the piece of paper in his pocket, again. Natasha was right. He couldn’t do this alone. If this meant opening up to the people he already trusted with his life, then –

 _For Bucky_ , he told himself. Bucky was worth it.

“I met my soulmate when I was six and he was eight,” he found himself saying instead, seeing but not registering how everyone subtly focused their attentions on him. It seemed like, no matter how different the future might be, people’s opinions on the subject of soulmates was still the same. “His name was –” he stumbled briefly, hesitating “– is Bucky Barnes.”

“ _Is_?” Tony cut in sharply, and Pepper dug an elbow into his side none-too-gently. “Ouch! Okay, okay,” he subsided into inaudible grumbles, but his fingers were already tapping away on his ever-present StarkTablet. Steve looked at him, and felt a rush of affection for an unexpected teammate whom he’d never expected to have his back.

Tony wasn’t Howard. He’d learnt that the hard way. But Howard wasn’t replaceable, just like Peggy wasn’t, and the Howling Commandos weren’t. But that was okay, he didn’t need to replace them. He had new people to watch his back, now, and that didn’t tarnish anything he’d had in a previous life.

He started at a not-so-subtle cough from Natasha, belatedly remembering that he had been speaking. “I ran into him – almost literally, in fact – on the stairs, the day he moved in.” Steve glanced down. “Of course, we stared at each other for about five seconds, and then I collapsed in an asthma attack. His parents weren’t very impressed.”

“That’s probably putting it lightly,” muttered Hill.

“I was twenty-two when he was drafted, and it was the first time he had to go somewhere I couldn’t follow,” Steve smirked self-deprecatingly. “And believe me, I _tried_. But nobody would take a short sickly kid who looked like a strong breeze would knock him over, with a list of medical conditions you couldn’t even pronounce.”

“Hence the serum,” Bruce whispered.

Steve gave him a nod. “Hence the serum,” he agreed. “I was desperate, and Erskine saw something in me that made him give me a chance.” He closed his eyes, then. “Shortly before the end of the war, Bucky fell off a train during a mission –” _the frigid winds whipping against his face, Bucky’s hand an icicle against his palm_ “– and right after that, I crashed Schmidt’s plane into the Arctic.”

He swallowed. “When I woke up, everything was grey.” He paused. “Except… six days ago, I watched the Helicarrier go up in flames. Red and gold flames.” His eyes flickered to the suitcase sitting innocuously in the corner. “The colour of Tony’s suit.”

“Hey! Don’t mock my colour choices!” And then Tony’s eyes narrowed. “I suppose, the fact that you’re here and he’s not, means it’s complicated?”

“I want to find him, but I need your help.” Steve took a deep breath. “First the Russians, and then HYDRA had had him for nearly seventy years. He’s known as the Winter Soldier.”

Hill drew in a sharp hiss of breath. “You don’t go for the easy ones, do you,” she asked rhetorically.

“The Red Room was a masterpiece,” Natasha took over the briefing, voice utterly neutral. “It can implant any memory necessary into your head, and erase anything unnecessary.”

“Great!” Tony’s voice swept through the room like a thunderclap. “So, we’re looking for a brainwashed off-grid assassin. When do we start?”

Steve blinked. Glanced around the room again. No, he hadn’t hallucinated it – everyone was nodding along to Tony’s words, looking as if they were moments away from standing up and conducting the search right away. No warnings of how dangerous it could be – he knew, oh he _knew_ , but asking him to walk away from Bucky one more time was like asking the Earth to stop orbiting around the sun – no telling him it was impossible to find a ghost. As if hearing his thoughts, Natasha smirked at him from her position on the couch, in the centre of the room.

“We’re –” he had to pause to clear his throat “– going to need a list of HYDRA bases, where he might have gone.” He glanced at Hill. “And as much information about the Winter Soldier as possible.”

Tony spread his hands, wiggling his fingers. “JARVIS and I can work miracles, but we need _something_ – a mainframe, a computer, _anything_ – to work with. Even I can’t magick files out of thin air.”

“I have an idea where S.H.I.E.L.D.’s current base is located,” Hill said hesitantly, “but I won’t be able to get us in there.”

“I think,” a voice piped up from the ceiling, and Clint dropped down from the air vents. His boots hit the floor with the finality of a thud. “I may be able to help with that.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I’m not coming for you, Buck. I’m coming for us._

Hill gave Clint a long, searching look.

“Yes, I’m sure about this.” One shoulder raised, just a fraction of an inch, before Clint seemed to notice what he was doing and consciously corrected his defensive posture. “Besides,” his voice was utterly neutral, “if we’re going to be running around HYDRA bases, having my colour vision back would be a huge advantage.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Steve felt obligated to point out.

Clint’s face twisted into something a little more sardonic. “Yes. Yes, I think I do.” Even as he spoke, his back became straighter, as if coming to terms with his decision, and it was this unconscious movement more than his actual words that stopped Steve from arguing further. “It’s going to happen sooner or later, so I might as well do it for a good cause.”

“I have a question.” Tony raised his hand, tilting his chair back on its back two legs as he barrelled on without waiting to be called. “Why would Clint be able to get us into the new S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters?”

Hill hesitated, exchanging a look with Clint, but it was Natasha who answered. “Because Phil Coulson is the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

Tony’s chair crashed down with a resounding thud.

“You’re kidding me.”

Natasha laid a hand on Bruce’s arm, which was indeed looking a little green, but Tony _had_ said the Avengers’ residence level was Hulk-proof. When a Stark told you he’d achieved something futuristic and fantastical, you believe him.

“No, no – this is, this is totally unacceptable. Are you all hearing this?” Tony gestured with an arm. “Fury said he’d _died_!”

“And he did!” Hill’s voice rose to a shout over Tony’s, and that successfully shut Tony up faster than Steve had ever seen. In a slightly gentler tone, she continued, “Nick didn’t lie; when he talked to you, Phil Coulson _was_ dead.”

“Was,” repeated Tony disbelievingly. “So, what, he was resurrected?”

“Yes.”

“That’s – impossible,” Bruce finally spoke up, and Steve was relieved to note that the greenish tinge to his skin had disappeared.

Hill shook her head. “I told him the exact same thing, when he kept Phil’s body in cryostasis and spent the next few days assembling a dedicated medical team. I said, ‘Nick, that’s impossible.’ And I’m going to repeat what he told me in response to that:

_“We live in an age where Gods walk the Earth and cyborgs ride flying scooters through an inter-dimensional portal. I think you’ll find, Maria, that we need a different definition of what’s ‘impossible’.”_

And he went on to prove it.”

“Okay. Okay.” Tony was breathing a little faster, but he no longer looked like he wanted to go a few rounds with Fury. In the armour. “So. Why weren’t we told Agent is no longer dead, then?” His gaze swept accusingly across Hill, who simply looked tired, across Natasha, who met his gaze unflinchingly, and across Clint, who was staring down at the floor.

“It was classified,” replied Hill, and Steve could see the defeat in her posture, the way she was preparing herself mentally for Stark’s outburst. “Only the people working directly with Phil were told.”

Steve could nearly _see_ the gears in Tony’s brain grind to a halt, a moment before he himself caught the unspoken implication in the phrasing of the answer.

“Are you telling me,” he began dangerously, “that even _his own soulmate_ didn’t know?”

Without looking up, Clint gave a tiny, jerky shake of his head.

“That’s – that’s _barbaric_ ,” Bruce found his voice first, mainly because Tony was still doing an excellent impression of a fish out of water, then looked faintly surprised at his own outburst. “When _did_ you find out?”

It was Natasha who answered. “Just three days ago.”

“And how long has Agent Coulson been _alive_?”

Hill looked as though she would dearly love not to answer Steve’s question, but finally relented. “About eight months.”

He’d suspected. But still, to hear it out loud – “You mean, in _eight months_ he hadn’t even bothered to _contact_ Clint?” Steve didn’t know Agent Coulson very well, but to hear the others – Tony and Pepper in particular, not just the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents – speak of him, he had been a good man. A great man.

He was beginning to doubt that.

Hill sighed. “To be fair, it wasn’t entirely his fault. Apparently, Phil didn’t even realise that Clint was alive at first, and none of us were aware of _that_ until he asked to see the grave.”

“He must have seen the media coverage of the Battle of New York.” Natasha’s eyes narrowed. “Even I was caught on a few stray cell phone cameras at the start, but most of the time Clint was far too high up for anyone to notice him. And he was discharged from S.H.I.E.L.D. right afterwards, so his file was permanently pulled out of the active personnel pool.”

That was also news to him. “They _fired_ you for being controlled by Loki?” Tony sounded as if he could barely keep the outrage out of his voice.

Clint hesitated for a moment, and then his head came back up. “Nick discussed it with me.” His voice, though quiet, was clear. “He offered to put me on extended bereavement leave if I needed to take a break, but I said I didn’t think I could work for S.H.I.E.L.D. again. And then Tony offered me a job, so…”

The silence hung in the air, everyone looking lost in their thoughts as they tried to assimilate the newest bombshell that was dropped on them.

“So, I hate to be the wet blanket, but what if Agent Coulson doesn’t let Clint in? He did just spend almost a year avoiding Clint after all.”

Hill frowned slightly at Bruce, but she didn’t protest the point.

Tony drummed his fingers on the counter, and then abruptly stood up. He pointed a finger at Clint. “Your bonding was registered, right? Legal and all that jazz?”

Clint looked startled. “Y-yes?”

“So, unless S.H.I.E.L.D. is blatantly flouting the Soul-bond Equality Act,” from Tony’s tone, he considered that a distinct possibility, “the systems should consider the two of you the same person. Which means that _technically_ , you should have the same access privileges as he does.”

“My official clearance level was seven,” agreed Clint cautiously, “but I _could_ access Level Eight files if I really wanted to. It was kind of unspoken that Nick and Phil trusted me not to abuse that.” He paused for a moment, worrying his lip briefly with his teeth. “But that only applies to bonded pairs, and, well,” his eyes flickered over to the far wall, “I’m no longer bonded.”

“You know that, and I know that, but does the S.H.I.E.L.D. computer know that?”

~*~*~*~

In the end, they took Tony’s smallest Quinjet for the cloaking technology it afforded, because Hill had cautioned, “They’re officially labelled as wanted criminals by the military, and Talbot’s been hunting for S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new base for the past month.”

Still, Steve couldn’t say that he was especially surprised to be met at the entrance to something called _The Playground_ – what sort of name was that, he could hear Stark muttering on the flight over – with drawn guns.

“You may want to put those away,” he advised almost pleasantly. “Dr Banner doesn’t really like having guns pointed in his direction.”

To her credit, the Asian woman with a gun pointed at Bruce’s head immediately switched targets to him without a flinch, leaving Bruce unguarded. There were three others with her, a small man who had his gun pointed at Natasha, a taller black man with his gun pointed at Tony, and a younger-looking girl who was aiming at Clint. Knowing S.H.I.E.L.D., there were probably automatic assault rifles hidden somewhere nearby, so really, the fact that Bruce and Hill appeared to be unguarded was superfluous.

“You know, with the way you so easily give up S.H.I.E.L.D. secrets, I wonder what Fury saw in you, Hill.”

“Well, this time I have a better excuse.” Hill didn’t pull out her own gun, her hands kept deliberately open and loose at her sides. “Have you ever tried to say ‘no’ to Captain America?”

The other woman raised an eyebrow, tilting her head just a fraction. The barrel of her gun didn’t so much as waver from Steve’s forehead.

Clint snorted, drawing everyone’s attention to him. “Still as much of a hard-ass as ever, I see.”

The woman flicked her eyes in his direction. “Barton,” she greeted flatly.

“May,” Clint’s voice was equally cordial. “Mind letting us in?”

There was a thoughtful pause as May appeared to think it over. “Why are you here?” she finally asked by way of reply.

The other female agent took her eyes off Clint for a moment to gape at her fellow colleague. “ _What_?”

“That’s not a no,” At the same time, Hill remarked with no small amount of surprise. Steve gathered that it wasn’t every day this May was willing to consider making an exception.

May shrugged, a tiny lilt of a shoulder, finally lowering her gun and re-engaging the safety lock. Her voice was dry as a desert. “Well, we won’t be able to hide the bodies.” Taking her action as a signal, the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents also holstered their weapons, albeit warily. “Phil’s not here at the moment, you’ll have to come back another time.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed almost immediately. “Does that sound like a diversion to anyone else? Because that sounds like a diversion to me. How do we know he isn’t hiding in there?”

“AC would never _hide_ –” began the young female agent indignantly.

“Then you won’t mind if we wait inside for him, would you?” Tony steamrollered over her easily, and she hesitated, eyes flickering to the older woman. Probably the overall-in-charge, Steve gathered, from the way everyone subconsciously obeyed her.

The smaller man bristled. “This is a _secret_ base, not somewhere you can just walk in willy-nilly! How do we know that you aren’t HYDRA spies?”

“Koenig does make a good point,” May conceded, although reluctantly.

Tony _stared_. And then he spun in a circle, gesturing wildly. “HYDRA spies? Are you really accusing _Captain America_ of working for HYDRA? And Black Widow, who helped him bring it down in the first place? And _me_? If I was working for HYDRA, they won’t be using those primitive systems!”

“Does it matter?” asked the taller man, who had been silent until now. “They don’t have lanyards, they can’t get in –”

May hesitated, which was all the incentive Tony needed. “That’s your cue, Hawkeye?” he sounded very, very amused. Steve was just hoping it wouldn’t blow up in their faces.

By the slight jerkiness in Clint’s movements, he privately agreed with Steve. Still, he made a credible attempt at sashaying confidently through the crowd, until he was in front of the security panel, and raised his right wrist to the biosensor. “Requesting access.”

“Name?”

Clint’s voice was clear, just the tiniest hint of an upwards lilt on the last letter. “Coulson, Philip J.”

There was an almost-silent whirring as the computers processed that information. Steve let out a small breath he hadn’t realised he was holding when the security light blinked green and the blast doors slid open.

Clint looked as surprised as Steve felt, staring at his wrist as though he hadn’t seen it before. “Huh, that actually worked.”

“Of course it worked,” Tony sounded honestly offended. “ _I_ said so.” Steve was half-expecting him to take a bow to some invisible audience at any moment – _something Howard used to do_ – but this Stark seemed to have restrained himself to bouncing a little on the balls of his feet as he moved towards the open doors.

“Oh my _God_ ,” there was a squeal as the unnamed female agent turned a betrayed look on her commanding officer. “You made me threaten to shoot AC’s _soulmate_?”

May herself was looking vaguely exasperated as she followed the rest of the team into the base. “Not now, Skye.” She pinned Clint with a hard look. “You’re a soft target, Barton. If Talbot catches wind of this –”

“Actually, you’ll find that since Clint Barton is an employee of StarkIndustries, he’s under _my_ protection,” Tony cut in. “If Talbot so much as _sneezes_ in his direction, I will drop four floors of lawyers on his head. My Legal department has been itching for something to do for weeks – they’ll bury him in so many lawsuits he can’t stick a toe out of Washington D.C.” He glanced around the corridors. “So, which way to the office?”

May inclined her head in acknowledgement, but didn’t relax. “I was telling the truth earlier, Phil really isn’t here.”

“That’s all right, we don’t need him.”

The moment Tony opened his mouth Steve knew it was the wrong thing to say.

“Then why _are_ you here?” May’s voice cracked like a whip, hard with suspicion. She moved to bodily block their way further into the base, though her hand didn’t stray to her weapon.

Well. It was his time to face the music, since they were doing it for him. “We’re looking for files on HYDRA bases.” Steve barely squashed the instinct to tack on a M’am at the end when the assessing gaze landed back on him. Making a split second decision when she didn’t budge from her position, he swallowed and added, “I’m looking for my soulmate.”

A tiny furrow appeared on her brow. “Your soulmate is involved with HYDRA?”

“Not anymore. He –” _always wanted to make things right_ , he wanted to add, but the words were stuck in his throat. “When I woke up in this time, I was fully prepared to spend the rest of my life in monochrome. Until six days ago, when I watched three Helicarriers go up in red flames,” he summarised.

May was still watching him carefully. “How do you know he isn’t working with HYDRA?” Her mouth twisted in distaste. “They’re very good at persuasion.”

“The incentives programme,” muttered Skye quietly, but not quietly enough. Noticing everyone’s eyes on her, she swallowed and elaborated. “HYDRA threatens someone you care about, like a family member or your soulmate, to get you to comply.”

Steve snorted before he could control himself, and hastened to explain. “That won’t be a problem. Buck’s got nobody else left in this time.”

“Buck, as in, Bucky _Barnes_?”

Steve blinked. He hadn’t expected anyone to make the connection, certainly not so fast. The unintroduced man flushed a little at the attention on him, but held out a hand. “Name’s Antoine Triplett. Call me Trip, everyone does. My granddad was a Howling Commando.”

Steve started, even as he reached out to shake Trip’s hand on autopilot. “Gabe’s grandson?”

Trip grinned, a flash of white teeth. “The one and the same.” The smile softened to something warmer. “It’s an honour to meet you, Sir.” He turned to May. “If that’s who Captain America’s looking for, then I say we have an obligation to help him.”

May looked like she was barely resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. “It’s not like I can stop you anyway.” She turned on her heel and marched down the corridor. “The office’s this way.”

~*~*~*~

“So where _is_ the Director?”

Skye looked up from the three computer screens she was setting up, Tony hovering over her shoulder. “He’s meeting up with former S.H.I.E.L.D. agents,” she replied to Hill, “seeing if they’re trustworthy.”

“We can’t even be sure _they’re_ trustworthy,” muttered Koenig from his position in the corner, wringing his hands. “Like what you’d said earlier, HYDRA’s incentive programme can make _anyone_ dance to their tune.”

The Avengers looked at each other.

“Well, Cap won’t be a problem,” decided Tony. “Me, I’d love to see someone try to blackmail Pepper. And Legolas _really_ won’t be a problem. That just leaves the ladies here and Brucie.”

There was a long pause, before Hill sighed and gave in. “My soulmate can take care of himself.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “Trust me, nobody’s more pissed off about HYDRA than he is.”

There was a moment as everyone digested that.

“Well, now I know what Fury sees in you,” May remarked drily while Tony wailed in the background about mental scarring.

Bruce shook his head slowly, the StarkTablet creaking in protest in his hands before he consciously loosened his grip on the device. “I met her. Then I became, well, _me_. And there’s no ‘us’ anymore.”

All eyes turned to Natasha, who hesitated a moment longer. “The Red Room…” she trailed off. “Well. I’m sterile. Less complications.”

Skye covered her mouth with her hands.

The redhead looked down for a moment, touching her right wrist almost subconsciously. “The Red Room specialised in neurological manipulation. Have you ever had someone play around in your brain? Pull you out, and stuff someone else back in?” The way she said it, it sounded like a quote. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw Clint flinch. “Memory manipulation was the least of their achievements. Having colour vision was undeniably beneficial. And, well, the chance of your asset finding a soulmate wasn’t. So –” she mimed making a slash over her wrist with her finger, and then fell silent.

“Right, then,” the cheer in Tony’s voice was forced, but nobody called him out on it. “Since we’ve all established that HYDRA can’t possibly have anything on any of us, are you going to give us the files or do I need to hack my way in?”

~*~*~*~

Between Skye and Tony, it didn’t take them long to compile a list of the biggest HYDRA bases, based on some sophisticated method of filtering encrypted radio chatter that Tony might have invented on the spot. He looked appropriately impressed when Skye cracked their encryptions in the amount of time he took to set up the filter.

“You know, if this spy gig doesn’t work out, StarkIndustries could always use someone like you.”

Steve pretended not to notice the way all the agents in the room tensed. To her credit, Skye simply flashed Tony a small smile. “Thank you, but I think I can make a bigger difference here.”

Tony nodded, but didn’t cajole her the way Steve sometimes saw him do when he really wanted something. “Position’s open any time you want it,” he promised.

“I’ll remember it,” Skye told him laughingly, tagging another HYDRA base on the screen with a red dot. “But, really, if he just escaped from HYDRA, why would he go back?”

 _Because that’s what he does_ , but Steve couldn’t say that. Unconsciously, his hand found its way into his pocket, and gripped the piece of paper in it tightly. _Don’t come for me._ Anyone else would take it at face value, but Steve knew better. They wouldn’t understand.

“He’s making amends.”

Or maybe they would. Steve sent Natasha a grateful look. “He’s making sure it won’t happen to anyone else.”

_I’m not coming for you, Buck. I’m coming for us._

~*~*~*~

They were almost to the entrance, files in hand, when the blast doors slid open again.

Phil Coulson stood on the other side, one hand still raised to the biosensor as though he’d forgotten all about it. He looked like he’d run all the way there, suit jacket draped over his other arm and sweat beading on his brow. Then he winced, passing a hand over his eyes.

Beside him, Clint jerked as though he’d been electrocuted, blinking rapidly.

Natasha turned slightly, pinning May like a butterfly to a board with her stare. The other woman looked unapologetic. “He needed the push.”

“Director Coulson was busy –” began Koenig weakly, but Natasha steamrollered over him.

“We live in a building so ostentatious it makes a peacock look dull and regularly appear on national television, I’m sure we aren’t that hard to track down.”

“Thank you,” Tony interrupted breezily, without looking up from his StarkTablet. He tapped a few squares, and made a soft ‘aha’ sound. “Cap, you may want to check out this one first.”

Steve took the proffered tablet, frowning down at the information.

“It’s got cryo-freeze facilities.”

“Right.” Steve committed the blueprints to memory, and refocused his attention on the others. While he was distracted, Clint had left the rest of them, and was now speaking quietly to Coulson in a corner.

He glanced at Natasha, who was staring after them, her arms folded across her chest.

Their voices were quiet, but not quiet enough for supersoldier hearing.

“Will you ever forgive me?”

Clint, very gently, extracted his arm from Coulson’s grasp. “I have a job to do,” he murmured almost inaudibly, not looking at the other man. “And so do you.”

**Author's Note:**

> [I have a Tumblr if you're interested!](starriewolf.tumblr.com)


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